Tonkotsu Miso Ramen

A rich, fatty tonkotsu ramen is something special. It’s not like anything else in this world. And in my humble opinion, the broth is the true star. The reality is that, assuming you have the proper components, the true main ingredient in a rich and creamy tonkotsu broth is time. Consisting of an umami rich broth, boosted by a dashi-based tare, chashu pork belly, soft boiled eggs, hand-made ramen noodles (be careful not to burn your hands), and any toppings you’d like, ramen is truly one of the most delicious things on earth. This ingredient list may scare you, but at the very least, if you make anything at all here, make the broth, dashi, and tare. It will blow your mind. I promise.

Broth
12 chicken wings
8 pork hocks
6 duck wings
1 cup white mushrooms
2 cups shiitake mushrooms
3 inch knob ginger (diced)
1 yellow onion (rough chopped)
8 cloves garlic
Salt

Chashu Pork Belly
1 square pork belly
4 cloves garlic
2 inch knob ginger (diced)
3 green onions (chopped)
1 cup soy sauce
1 cup mirin
1/3 cup fish sauce
1/2 cup white sugar

Soft Boiled Eggs
1 tbsp vinegar
6 eggs
Ice bath
3/4 cup mirin
1/4 soy sauce
1/4 cup dark soy sauce

Dashi
3 sheets kombu
1/2 cup niboshi
1 cup bonito flakes
1/2 cup shiitake mushrooms

Tare
2 cups homemade dashi
1 cup soy sauce
1 cup mirin
1/2 cup sake
2 tbsp vinegar
6 cloves garlic
2 inch knob ginger
2 tbsp black peppercorns
1/2 cup white miso

Ramen Noodles
Baking powder
All purpose flour
Bread flour

Toppings
Enoki mushrooms
Green onions
Toasted nori
Sesame seeds

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Ramen. I’ve been wanting to make this forever and to be completely honest with you I’ve been holding off a little bit just because of how much time goes into making something like this. I mean to give ramen that tender love and care that you need to give it in order to make it perfect– I just haven’t yet had the time for that. But now is the time. I know so many of you have asked for ramen for so, so long. So today we’re making Tonkotsu ramen. Tonkotsu ramen is a fan favorite and you may not recognize that word but trust me you know exactly what it is. It’s that ramen with that rich and fatty pork broth, those beautiful, soft, chewy fresh noodles, an ooey-gooey soft egg cooked to perfection, beautiful, juicy pork belly, and whatever toppings you want. Now, because this recipe is going to take me quite some time, I’ve already started a couple of things, but I started them yesterday. I had a different haircut, there was different weather outside, but I had to get a couple of those steps done before to make sure this could come together today. So for now let’s pop back to yesterday when I hadn’t shaved yet and when I had longer hair and we’ll go to an Asian market. So we’ve just pulled up to this Asian grocery store. We are going to be grabbing some unique and awesome ingredients here because I need to really make sure that this broth is delicious. So the first thing we’re going to grab is a bunch of pork bones and chicken bones for that really flavorful stock. This place literally, they have everything in this market. These black silky chickens, there are so many cool things here. Then we’re going to grab a couple of duck wings and chicken wings separately. All the fish that they have in this place are alive in tanks. They got some real plump melons in this place. Let me just tell you, I’m not able to read some of this stuff. So I’m having a little bit of trouble finding mirin but I know where the soy sauce is. In an attempt to make this more flavorful broth, I’m going to put some dried mushrooms in there as well and they have this massive selection. I don’t know what gorgeous memory means. So I’m looking for Enoki mushrooms which are these really nice thin ones that you might see in ramen sometimes, so we got those. I think we found them. They have all the soy sauce in the world. I could absolutely bathe in this stuff. It feels like negative 8 million degrees in here. I’m frigid. Praise the mirin gods, we finally got it. It’s beautiful. The sweet nectar of the mirin gods. Oh, wait, there’s no space in there. Basically, we couldn’t get the pork belly at the last place, but I got it in front of the Whole Foods guy. I’m standing there waiting and he’s like, "hey man, this is weird but has anyone ever told you you look kind of like the guy that throws the knives on the internet?" I was like, actually, happens to be me but we got the pork belly, so, let’s get home and make some ramen. Let me just tell you and I mean this in the least perverted way possible, there is nothing like a good Japanese eggplant. I’ve got to find a place to put this for the drive. So now that we’ve returned from the store, I’m going to start making that amazing ramen broth because, to me, that’s the most important thing that we’re working with here. I’m actually doing this the day before, but let’s just get it going. First into this large pot here, I’m going to go in with all my chicken wings. That’s going to give us just some of the flavor here that we’re looking for, but I’m going to get it from three different proteins. Next, I’m going to start taking these pork hocks that we got from the Asian grocery store and dropping these right in with our chicken. As you can see here, there is some meat on the outside there. But we’ve got a nice big chunk of bone in there that’s going to give us tons and tons of flavor. Once I’ve tossed in all those pork bones– make sure you don’t put this thing in there– I’m going to go ahead and add my last bit of protein in there, which are duck wings. These again, should give us some awesome unique flavor. Now I’m going to cover all of this up with some nice cold and crisp water. Then crank up the heat and bring this to a nice rolling boil, which will get out a bunch of the nasty impurities. Once this has come to a rolling boil, clear off some of the scum that begins to form on the top. Some people will tell you to rinse this all the way out, but I like to keep all the flavor that’s still in there from the bone, so I don’t like to rinse it out. Once you’ve cleared off the scum, we’re going to add a nice big handful of white mushrooms, a handful of those dried shiitake mushrooms that we got at the market, which will hopefully give us that umami flavor. Then add a few nice knobs of ginger, one quartered onion, a few cloves of garlic, and last but not least, a generous little handful of salt. Now is when we let this go overnight for 12 hours. This is going to do all the work for us while we go to sleep. Next, we’ll do our Chashu pork belly. That part, of course, is really important. Whenever you see ramen with a nice big hunk of pork in there, that’s what we’re talking about right now. Now, this part you don’t have to do overnight, but I’m going to sous-vide it to get it really soft and tender. So I’m going to let this go overnight as well. This pork has been very bad, so we have to tie it up. First, I’m going to roll it all the way up, just like this, getting it as tight as I possibly can. Then I’m going to come under it with some butcher’s twine, and then, tying as snugly as possible, I’m going to give it a really good squeeze. This way we can cut it into nice rings when we go to have our ramen. We’re going to repeat this process across our entire pork belly. For our sous-vide, the first thing we’ll do is put this finally rolled-up pork into a nice large bag. To the bag we’re going to add four cloves of garlic, a few hunks of ginger, three loosely chopped green onions, one cup of soy sauce, try to make it a nice high-end soy sauce, one cup of mirin, which is a really delicious sweet rice seasoning that’s a little bit similar to sake in flavor, 1/3 cup of this extremely pungent fish sauce, a nice little handful of white sugar, about a half a cup or so, and really anything else you want to be creative with. Then inside the bag, we’re going to massage the heck out of our meat. Now we’re going to roll this up extremely tight and seal it. And now, with our water at 175 degrees Fahrenheit, I’m going to slowly lower in that pork and cook this overnight for about 12 to 15 hours. In the morning we should have the softest pork ever. I’ll see you in the morning. Okay, it’s the next morning. I was tending to that ramen broth throughout the night. I’m not sure if you can see it, but it’s in that silver pot back there. I kept adding water throughout the night as it boiled off to allow the broth to get even more concentrated and my entire kitchen smells incredible. Not to mention that slow-cooked pork that’s all the way over there. We had so many things going on in here that we blew the fuse three times last night, but now we’re ready to go about the rest of those steps. So let’s start with our soft-boiled eggs. Now that our water is boiling, we’re ready to add those eggs, but first, we’re going to add about a tablespoon or two of vinegar, which is actually going to prevent the running of the whites if any of these eggs crack. At this point, we’re going to quickly add our six eggs and then almost immediately we’re going to start our timer because the timing here is extremely important. I’ll drop in my six eggs, burning my fingers in the process, place the lid on, and then I’m not sure if you can see the timing here, but we’re going to do it for six minutes and nine seconds, which I promise you, it sounds silly, but it’s the perfect time for a soft-boiled egg. Start! Once that time runs low, we’re going to prepare to cold shock our eggs because given how precise these are, we don’t want them to overcook. Here I have a really cold ice bath and when the eggs are done, I’ll plunge them straight into the ice bath to halt their cooking. We’re timing them precisely for a reason here. So once those are all in the ice bath, mix them around a little bit to make sure they’re evenly coated. For our ramen egg marinade, we’ll combine 3/4 cup of mirin, 1/4 cup of soy sauce, and 1/4 cup of dark soy sauce. If you can’t find dark soy sauce, that’s fine. Just add a little bit of brown sugar and try not to spill it all over your shoe. Now it’s time to peel our eggs, but I just wanted to show you guys first how perfect that yolk looks on the inside. I told you it’s amazing. Now we’re going to quickly peel these eggs, trying not to ruin them in the process and I actually find that it helps to peel them right over and in that cold water. Now, once you have those perfectly peeled eggs, drop them right in that soy bath. That’s where that color and flavor will permeate right through the eggs. Once you finish peeling all of those eggs, you’re going to want to somehow weigh them down so they get even coloring throughout. I’ll cover these with plastic wrap and allow them to soak for several hours. Our eggs are all set. Next, we’re going to make our tare. It’s a really concentrated flavoring used in a lot of Japanese soups. It’s kind of a base and we’re going to add it to our broth to give it a little bit more flavor. First, we’re going to start with our dashi and there are five different types of dashi in Japanese cuisine. Kombu, katsu, iriko, shiitake, and awase. I apologize if I pronounced any of those incorrectly, but awase is the one we’re going to be doing and that’s a combination of several. So to start, we’re going to turn up the heat and add about three and a half to four cups of water. Now into that water, we’re going to start with three sheets of kombu and really let this heat up to start getting some of the flavors out but we don’t want to boil it. We’re actually looking to get around 170 degrees Fahrenheit here. Basically, dashi is this umami-packed Japanese soup stock. It’s used in so many different things and this is how we’re going to build the foundation for our tare. Now that our kombu has had some time to soak and it’s getting a little bit softened, I can really take in all that flavor. Actually, I want to get into a quick facial. We’re not filming, right? Yeah. Okay. Oh, my god. Now it’s time to add a few more things. What I have here is called niboshi, which are these dried baby sardines. I’ve been soaking these sardines overnight. So first I’ll pour these into our broth, or our tare I should say, followed by about a cup of bonito flakes, which if you’ve never heard of them are from a fish, as well as a little handful of our dried shiitake mushrooms. Now I’ll be totally honest, I’m not sure if what I’m doing right now is permissible under Japanese ramen laws but the way I see it, I’m packing in tons of umami flavor here and making for an even more flavorful broth. I’m also using ingredients that would be used in a traditional dashi regardless. Once this has had some good time to soak, I’ll turn off the heat and set it aside, allowing it to soak a little bit longer. Once that incredible dashi is done, and I can’t even begin to describe the flavors coming out of this thing, we’ll strain it into a nice large bowl. The broth that’s here smells incredible and it already feels like this itself will be a delicious treat to slowly sip. But now keeping about two cups of our dashi, we’ll create our tare by adding one cup of soy sauce, one cup of mirin, 1/2 cup of sake, two tablespoons of vinegar, six cloves of garlic which I’ll press through my garlic press to let them spread and get out more and more flavor, and by the way, if you like using garlic but hate getting it on your fingers, I would highly recommend the garlic press, about a two-inch piece of cut up ginger, and then about two tablespoons of black peppercorns. Now we’re going to let our tare sit just like the eggs to kind of soak in all these flavors and we’ll strain it at the last minute. Now for our ramen. I don’t know what I just did with my hands. I don’t know why I did that. We’re going to start by adding six grams of baking soda to 160 grams of water. Then we’re going to whisk this up and let it go. You see ramen noodles are very interesting. The first thing I’ll say is, please do not use dry instant ramen noodles. This is an absolute no-go. Don’t worry, I’m still going to eat that. Ramen noodles are very different in that they need to be alkalinated. That’s basically just a fancy way of saying that we put baking soda in the dough, but another trick is to boil regular spaghetti with eight cups of water and a couple of tablespoons of baking soda in it. That can also get you those nice chewy noodles that we look for in ramen. Once all that baking soda is mixed in, we’ll add a nice little sprinkle of salt and mix that in as well until dissolved. Then we’ll set our water aside. And now in a large mixing bowl, we’re going to add about 400 grams of bread flour and four grams of vital wheat gluten. The vital wheat gluten you may have to order online if you want to make these homemade, but again, you can take the easy route and boil spaghetti in that baking soda water. Now we’ll whisk this stuff until it’s well combined, making sure that the wheat gluten is evenly distributed and now we’ll add this bowl to our mixer with the paddle attachment and churning slowly, I’ll add in about half of my water to let this get evenly distributed. It should start to get nice and crumbly and once those crumbles start to get more even, you can prepare to put that second batch of water in. Now we’ll add in that second amount of water, letting this evenly soak into our dough. It should start to come together more at this point and if you do need to add a little bit of extra water to let that dough come fully together, do it. Once this is clumpy and well combined, we’ll turn off our mixer and let it rest. Cover it with plastic wrap for 30 minutes. Once that dough has had some time to rest, separate it out into two separate balls and press them together. What’s nice about this dough, is that you don’t have to knead it. After we’ve rolled it out a little bit with our rolling pin, you’ve got to love a good handy rolling pin, we’ll begin to roll out our noodles. Again, this is going to be extremely dry, but just be confident with it and let the mixer do all the work. After rolling it through, take a little bit of bread, flour, and sprinkle that across your ramen dough, then roll it again. We just want to get it nice and smooth to the point that we can make some gorgeous noodles. Again, this dough is really hard to work with because it’s a little bit dry and it’s also very glutenous. So to be honest, if there’s any step that I’d skip in making homemade ramen and you’re a little bit nervous about it, I’d probably skip this part. Once you’ve rolled this out nearly all the way, we’re ready to cut it into that spaghetti shape. Switch on that spaghetti head, and then you’re ready to roll. Give yourselves a huge pat on the back right now because what you’re looking at right here are your gorgeous homemade ramen noodles. I have to say, I’ve never done this before, but these look absolutely fantastic. In fact, I could almost use them as a nice scarf, just toss them over myself and walk around like this in public. I think people would like me this way. Now once you’ve got your ramen into nice portions, spin that ramen into nice little nests and hit it with a nice spray of bread flour just so nothing sticks. Now our ramen is ready to be cooked. Right here is our 24-hour ramen broth. You can see that it’s been going for so long that we have that darker, more robust color. All that pork, chicken, and duck are more tender than anything you’ve ever seen before. The bones have been fully cleaned of all their meat. And what we have right here is a complex, fatty, umami-packed broth perfect for ramen. We’re going to strain off all this broth to make it nice and smooth as we don’t want any of these solids in the final product. I like to use a really fine strainer here just to make sure that we’re getting every last solid out. And now what you see here is our broth. Concentrated, delicious, and ready to go. Next, we have our Chashu which is our Japanese pork belly that we need to cut. Let’s hear that again, folks. There’s going to be juice everywhere here. I know that this is going to be messy. Do you know what time it is? It’s time to get our hands dirty. Now I’m going to very gently come in and try to lift out this pork belly without it breaking on me. You can see that it’s just falling right apart here. Oh my god, that’s good. That is so good. I’m going to start by adding some of that excess liquid into our pot here because we can use some of that in our ramen broth too, as this has more pork flavor than anything we could possibly imagine. Now I’ll roll this onto our counter. What you’re looking at here is pork belly that has been cooked the entire night. The whole thing is so jiggly. This right here is fall-apart pork belly. Just look at this piece of fat here that can crumble right across my gloves and the meat pulls right out of the sides. Even our cloves of garlic here fall all right apart in your hands. This pork is something out of my dreams. It is dripping juice and it is so incredibly hot. You can see where each of the pieces of butcher’s twine are still on here. But I just can’t help it, I have to spank it. Lastly, though, I do want you to look at the meat on the sides there. You can see that all that pork is almost shredded like this soft, perfectly tender pulled pork. To everybody watching right now. If you’re not drooling right now, I’m sorry. I don’t know how I can ever please you. I don’t know if you’ll be able to watch my videos anymore because this is just about the best I think I can do. Pork belly, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you these last 24 hours, but now it’s time to cut in. Oh, pork belly. I didn’t mean to do that. I am sorry. Now for our ramen, we want these beautiful rings cut out of this pork belly. So let’s get a couple of nice slices just right through here. You know, it’s funny. It’s almost so soft and tender that I can’t really get any slices, but given how tender this is, this is the best we’re going to do here and that looks just like what you’d see in a ramen bowl. So that’s good enough for me. Once I’ve pulled off the pork belly’s thong, I can get a few more good slices in, but again, inside, I’m laughing because it’s almost too tender to do what we’re looking to do with it. Once you’ve gotten a couple of nice slices that can go in your ramen bowls, we’re all set to prepare the rest of the ingredients and make this ramen. While we have you here, I want to give you one last chance at how delicate this is. Watch how easily my knife goes through this. Not! Just kidding, we don’t need a knife. Look at that pulled pork! Now to finish off our tare, which is, of course, a very important part of this, we’re first going to strain out all those little things that we added in there for that extra flavor. Then we’ll add a little bit of that pork liquid, just to give a little bit of extra pork flavor in there. And last but not least, what I have here is shiro miso, which I’m actually going to open up and add a few tablespoons of directly to my tare. In addition to that miso flavor, of course, that’s actually going to give us that nice cloudiness that we look for in a really good miso broth. So once I whisk this up, our tare is all set. We can set this aside. Now, what I have here are Enoki mushrooms, and these are quick and easy, just a nice topping to put on our ramen. I’ll very simply chop off the base, which has those dirty areas on it, and then just steam these beauties off for a few minutes and they’re ready to go. Now it’s time to finally open up those soft-boiled eggs and I know you’ve probably been waiting for this moment. First, let’s cross our fingers that we got that color from those eggs. Sure enough, we did. Just to show you a little spot on the top of the egg that was not submerged should give you that contrast to show you how amazingly well this got colored with our soy. Now for one of the most exciting things, we’re going to cut through that egg very clean and keeping all that yolk inside. As you can see, the outsides of the egg have clearly gotten some of that soy. And boy, oh, boy, aren’t those yolks incredible? Just look at how soft and amazing it is. When cutting these open use a really sharp knife to get that nice clean cut. Now we’ve reached the final shot where we assemble. I know this is the moment you’ve all been waiting for, so let’s get started. To start, after mixing it around a little bit, I’ll place a nice spoonful or two of my tare. Again, that’s going to give that beautiful umami broth base here. Then comes my actual broth. The whole top layer is fat, that beautiful pork fat that we’re looking for in our broth. And with this, I’ll take several large scoops right into my big bowl. This right here is what we all came for. We worked so incredibly hard on this gorgeous broth, so it’s amazing to finally be able to put it into the bowl. One more scoop and we should be complete. Now you might be wondering, where are the actual ramen noodles? Those should be placed into this hot broth immediately when they finish. So into this pot, I will pour a bunch of boiling water, unsalted. And once it’s boiling over very high heat, I’ll toss in our ramen. I’ll stir this around just to make sure none of it sticks. And then for just a minute and 30 seconds or so, we’ll let this cook. Admire how amazing my homemade noodles are. And after one or two shakes, I’ll put it directly into my ramen broth. This already looks incredible and now we’re ready for that final plating. So in goes our Enoki mushrooms, evenly spaced out for a beautiful little look on the side. Then we’ll go right in the middle with those gorgeous eggs. Then we have our beautiful pork, which will rest right on the side of our ramen, then a nice generous handful of green onions, and last but not least, some nori that I’ve actually gotten straight from Japan. And that right there is one of the most gorgeous ramen bowls I’ve ever seen. Now, before we eat this, I want to paint the pork in a little bit more fat and then just give it a little torch for some color and flavor. Now our ramen is ready to eat. Now before I eat I do want to say that this is one of the most beautiful bowls of ramen I’ve ever seen and yes I feel like I’m saying that often with things we make but think about how much time and effort goes into all these things. I’m always going to tell you the truth too, about how things taste. Look, I’ve tried a lot of things out there so I love food but I’m rarely truly impressed by food that much anymore and I’m not saying that in a picky or greedy way. I’ve just been so lucky to try so many things and food has been my whole life so it’s just rare that I come across things that truly blow my mind but I’ll eat anything. Bring me to Popeye’s for lunchtime, and I’m the happiest person ever, and bring me to a really nice restaurant and I’ll enjoy that too. But I will say that I’m really excited about this ramen. I think the first thing I want to do since we put so much time and effort into it, is try that broth. So let’s dive in. I’m going to take a nice little spoonful out, mix it around a little bit to fill it up, and then take a slurp. This is really special and I completely mean that. I’ve been to Japan once and I’ve tried a lot of ramen there. I’ve tried ramen all over the place. I am absolutely not kidding and you can try it yourself if you don’t believe me following all these steps. But this is definitely one of the best ramen broths I’ve ever had. It’s fatty, which is exactly what you want. It’s super, super flavorful with so much umami in there and so much depth to the flavor. It’s also just a little bit thicker in your mouth. You have that cloudy miso in there, I mean, it’s just one of those broths that you don’t need the rest of the ramen. It’s something so incredibly magnificent just by itself. Now next, I actually want to just try one of these eggs quickly. Now, I don’t like eggs normally and I still don’t love these just by not liking eggs that much. But I love that the soy has permeated the edges just a little bit and gives it kind of a unique flavor and texture. It’s really, really tasty. But next, we have to try those homemade ramen noodles because we really did put a lot of work into these. So let’s see if we nailed that consistency. I mean, I’m not really surprised here but they’re delicious. Similar to the way fresh pasta is a little bit more delicate and just fresher than box dry pasta. This has those same qualities which I love. Just one more little bite here of that fall-apart pork. We are absolutely not messing around with this ramen and I’ll say this without a question without even having to stop and think. We’ve brought in Parmesan wheels on this channel. We’ve had tons and tons, and tons of fresh fish. Live stuff all the time that comes right in the kitchen and then moments later we eat it. Ridiculous burgers made from wagyu, from Japan. But suddenly all that doesn’t matter so much. This is the best thing we’ve made yet on YouTube and I mean that 150%. This is insane. Now this bowl is probably a little bit bigger than my head so it’s going to take me some time to eat this thing but let me quickly say this. Please don’t forget to drop a like on the video. Definitely subscribe and if you already are, hit that notifications button. It’s just sitting right there waiting for you and you don’t want to miss anything like this. And also, we’re almost at two million subscribers which is absolutely insane. So you could be the two millionth and that’d be pretty special but really I hope you enjoyed the video. I am telling you right now, this ramen was absolutely insane so definitely, definitely give this a shot if you’re even thinking about it and I’ll see you next time.